I Will Only Apologize For One Thing

..the seeming monotony of this blog's turn from talking about how to become self-sufficient to a seeming fixation with current politics.

Are we still about how to utilize wild plants, grow multiple use crops, learn the old ways in this new world? Yes.

So why am I droning and ranting on about the state of our government...not the original intent of this blog surely.

Well, our self sufficiency was to put the responsibility for our own present and future squarely in OUR hands, to reduce and eliminate the reliance on the government and modern conveniences to whatever degree we felt we were able for our own household. To TAKE RESPONSIBILITY and exercise our freedoms. To SIMPLIFY. To REDUCE and live lightly, free of many expenses and free to make our own decisions for OUR LIVES, OURselves. To not leave those choices to others. To accept a lifestyle of OUR making that won't have the values determined by others, but the ones determined by ourselves.

And to glorify God in how we live, the way we see fit.

To be abundant and be tied to very few belongings beyond what we need and a few pleasant things.

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I learned something before these changes to our country began snowballing in recent years. I learned it from others in other countries who knew it from experience. It is summed up in this poem by Wislawa Szymborska, and excerpt of which appears on my sidebar, from the book entitled Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness
:


We are the children of an epoch,
the epoch is political.

Everything of yours, ours, theirs,
daytime affairs, night-time affairs,
are political affairs.

Like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin has a political hue,
and your eyes a political aspect.

What you speak about has resonance,
What you hush has a voice
more or less political.

Even walking through field or forest
you take political steps
on a political basis.

Apolitical verses are also political,
and the moon above is shining, a thing no longer moonly.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
What kind of question? answer, my dear.

A political question. You don't even have to be a human being
to profit from political significance.
It's suffices for you to be crude oil,
animal feed or recycled materials.

Or a conference table, about whose shape
they debated for months
as though it were a matter of life or death:
should it be round or square?

Meanwhile people perished,
animals died,
homes burned
and fields went to seed
as they did in less political
bygone epochs.

-translation by Walter Whipple



In the four plus years I've been blogging here, I've been honored to get to know so many of the good folks in what I loosely term the Homesteading community of bloggers. We have overlaps even amidst our diversity. We value pursuits that have meaning to us and that are worth sacrifices and re-educating ourselves, making changes, trying new things (or old things new to us). We've seen innumerable issues arise in our communities, states, nations related to our rights to choose our livelihoods, to practice them, things related to privacy, food rights, battles over seeds and planting and small farms vs. big agriculture, struggles over quality and marketplace and nutrition and health. A simple glass of milk is fraught with political significance on many levels these days as are our rights to know what our food is, where it comes from, decide how we grow it, resist efforts to keep consumers distanced from their food sources.

It's clearer than ever that no matter how remote we'd like to remain from political issues, WE ARE political in that we live, we work, we eat...and if we are to remain free in the US we must not relinquish those freedoms without resistance.

I believe in peaceful resistance. The Constitution insures that we can speak our minds as an essential freedom in this country.

I am concerned that the very people who are now speaking in disagreement against the strongarm tactics of many of our politicians are now being labeled "anti-government" and "anti-diversity" and any number of terms designed to malign a normal citizen's right to DISAGREE and PROTEST.

But we MUST. There is a timeline of opportunity in which the very document that guarantees our right to speak freely and protest freely is now in jeaopardy. If you think this is an exaggeration, do a quickie search and you'll see I'm actually speaking rather softly about it.

It's crucial that we not lose our window of opportunity and that we take it. Our nation is in danger. If this makes you roll your eyes, hearing these words, you can X out my blog now and rack my rant up to another hothead needing to vent. But I'm not and I couldn't care less about being a loudmouth or participating in something political. I'm saying this because it's now an unavoidable subject on every level.

We are losing our rights. They are not eroding, they are being sidelined and socialised. This will affect everything. FOOD. FAMILY. PRIVACY. FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT. REGISTRY WITH THE GOVERNMENT. THE INTERNET. ECONOMICS. NATIONAL SECURITY. SELF DEFENSE. JOBS. PRIVATE OWNERSHIP. POPULATION. PERSONAL RIGHTS...our BODIES, CHILDREN, RELIGION. LAND OWNERSHIP.

We are in danger.

I am not panicked, but please let's see the truth. The truth to address what's really happening, not to panic. To repair and prepare.

We are in danger from our international enemies like few times in our nation's history.

We are in danger of losing the exercise of our constitutional freedoms like few times in our nation's history.

If we don't DO something and SAY something now, when will we?

I don't accept the assumption that we must meekly bow our necks and go with the flow...this nation was not founded on going with the flow. If the flow today was in ACTUALITY what the majority determined it wanted, maybe I'd be more willing to go with it. But there is a minority that has bullied the majority and whomever is to blame, the thing has happened.

I saw this at another site and it expresses some of the outrage I am feeling at this point, even though I can't say I was one of the ones who embraced the glee club's "CHANGE" slogan nor thought Mr. O would be the answer we needed for necessary solutions. I did not vote for him.

But I agree with the sentiments of this youtube video.




It's time our population grew up and realized this isn't high school any more. The popularity contest of high school usually centers around class clowns and splashy cheerleaders but is short on wise leaders and valuing those who go the distance. It's more about fanfare and football games than family and the sweat of daily life, and defending home and country. The media's coverage of Washington, and the embarrassing spectacle of government manipulators and talking heads that inundate the news are grotesque in their sophomoric antics, seeming to be more for shock effect or media splash than for actual integrity and levelheaded leadership. This is now a culture in which the opinion of popular comedians actually impacts politics? Have we become nothing more than a caricature?

In fact, it seems to be more and more that any semblance of order and constitutional viability are openly mocked unless given lip service when the purpose serves.

GET OUT. You who are ruining my country, GO.
You have bankrupted me and my family and I did not act irresponsibly the way you did. I am enraged.

I am enraged at your capacity to laugh as I shoulder the consequences of your ignorance and party pandering, your attitude of entitlement even while you talk about redistributing wealth you never earned, your secretive back room deals while you soothe us with platitudes or baffle us with BS or hone your doublespeak but can't answer a simple question with a simple yes or no. W are enraged at your backing down when intimidated by your peers, by being more concerned with your own political survival than representing your hometown people. You have sold out my country to its enemies, you have handed our manufacturing to the lowest bidder despite the fact they are the most egregious perpetrators of genocide and human rights violations in near history and accomplish their huge export quotas through modern slave and forced labor, even to the point of thumbing their noses at any international accountability.

You have so scorned Israel that you will play footsie with the Irans of the world who make no bones about despising us and wanting to annihilate both us and Israel, and make halfbaked overtures to despots and terrorists while not even giving the prime minister of Israel media coverage or the time of day when he came here to be ushered in your back door like nothing more than a saucy little wench. THAT is befitting our great nation and the peace talks upon which hinge the fates of nations????? As fares Jerusalem, so fare the fates of many. May Israel never give a single inch of her own ground to any other people or nation and may Jerusalem see the reign of Messiah.

I will now refrain from singing the hatikvah since I don't yet know the words...;-)

Back to the USA. Our country is in trouble now, and it effects us, all of us.

These things affect everything my husband and I do, everything we are attempting to accomplish in our homestead dreams. And our future. We don't have 50 years ahead of us, we have much fewer even if we have long lives, which I hope we will. We have invested in this country all our lives like those we know have. Freedom's not free, it's not a toy. It's earned and it's a responsibility.

Now it's becoming radical to disagree with the current leadership. It's "anti-government."

BALONEY.

This homestead has not changed in our goals and hopes and dreams. We love our nation.

We hate what this current administration is doing to destroy it, and that has EVERYTHING to do with our being able to live our lives on our homestead peaceably, growing things, being part of our community, minding our own business...FREELY.

This is not the time to turn the other cheek or decide it's graceless to criticize our leaders. Our constitution is here for a purpose...for US to BE our own government and to change it if it goes astray. We are OBLIGATED to DO JUSTICE, or guess what? The bullies take over.

And they will if we let them.

We have to have a backbone, a conscience, an opinion, values, a conviction, a decision about where we stand and what we want for ourselves and our children. If WE don't, someone else will, and it won't be what we ourselves would have chosen.

Do NOT HAND OVER YOUR POWER AS A CITIZEN, folks. Take up your own power and be heard. If we lose that freedom, we don't get it back in our lifetime, maybe never.

Oh, and for the record, if things get so lame that the extreme liberals begin throwing around the RACE card, don't settle for the stupidity of that accusation (unless you're a bigot, and if so, I want no part of your agenda). It's the biggest insult to whatever minority group you wish to identify with the current Far Lefties that they presume to represent you. They bully and backroom deal BLATANTLY, making jokes about whipping the populace around like so many good ol' boys (and girls)...how is this not the basest of insults? It insults the intelligence and sensibilities of ANY group supposedly represented.

I am not going to join the ranks of those skulking around worried that I'll be called a bigot for opposing the actions of our sitting president who is a black man simply because I myself am not considered a black woman. I don't buy into the idea of race anyway, but that's a whole other subject.

OK, this could go on for a good long time. I'd rather be re-reading my seed catalogues (and will...)

I just thought an explanation was in order as to the direction of the blog.

We're still on the same journey and doing the same things to get there. I just hope "there" is still the United States of America and there's not a hammer and sickle instead of the stars and stripes.

Beware of any message from a politician or the media shouting that we can't criticize the status quo without being labeled a traitor or antigovernment. That is a really really bad sign. The healthiest of leaders will welcome the process of debate and open criticism and will rise to the lead via the majority, not by silencing it.